When we are talking about an issue where someone is potentially at risk of suicide, nothing else matters. There’s nothing else in the pronoun debate that comes close to the weight of all the dead kids lost to suicide because they didn’t feel accepted by our transphobic society. We need to make trans people feel accepted. Someone else thinking they’re accepted isn’t good enough, because that doesn’t change the suicide risk. The only measure of whether trans people are actually accepted is what trans people think.

I’m afraid that if we’re going to have a conversation about the experiences of capitalised pronoun users, the bigotry of certain people outside the community is going to have to be a part of the conversation. Most people are not transphobes, but some are, and most of the people who engage in violent and uncompromising transphobia are cis. That’s not an attack on cis people, it’s just the world we live in. Us trans people don’t have the luxury of being cisphobic. That’s not because of some kind of inherent superioity, it’s because the conditions of society don’t afford us the same latitudes when it comes to displaying intolerance. A trans person who went around misgendering cis people with neopronouns would be laughed at, while the same behaviour from cis people is often tolerated. That’s the simple reason. Nobody’s better than anyone else, it’s simply what happens when a society is transphobic.

General pronouns have to be one or the other, or alternating, or some other strategy. I’ve only reported comments that misgendered Me after I already asked that person to use My preferred pronouns. I’ve had positive experiences with 90% of people that disliked being referred to with uppercase pronouns. The remaining 10% are people who weren’t happy when I immediately used their preferred pronouns upon request. They were offended that I used a capitalised pronoun when addressing a person who had no previously stated preference, and they wanted Me to always lowercase strangers. So I agreed to their demands, and I lowercase everyone by default now. And of course that 10% is a minority of a minority, because most people aren’t specifically LPUs, they don’t care about the capitalisation of their pronouns. 99% of people who lowercase pronouns some or all of the time are perfectly pleasant. I am not insulting you when I talk about this small group that caused problems in the past.

Nonbinary isn’t a gender. It’s an umbrella term for about a billion genders. I have a gender identity, and it’s goddess. I’d like you to stop saying My gender identity is invalid, please.

Thank you. I do want My pronouns to be something unlike what people are used to dealing with. I got the idea for My pronouns from My goddess-mother who suggested them, and She has a name that’s always lowercase. If you capitalise the first letter of Her name, you’re deadnaming Her. Unfortunately I rolled really badly on the preferred name and pronouns stat during character creation, and now I have to deal with preferred pronouns that society chooses to see as a symbol of oppression. I deal with more dysphoria these days than I did when I was closeted, because it hurts a lot worse when someone knows My pronouns and still misgenders Me. There’s an intentionality to it that wasn’t there before. But I also get more euphoria when people are respectful, so I’m happy with My decision to come out of the closet in contexts like My blog and this account.

I want to circle back to the similarity I drew with transmasculinity in the article. Suppose there’s a person, we’ll call her Jenny, who refuses to he/him absolutely anyone. She doesn’t believe in the male gender at all. Jenny knows that gender is a social construct, and refuses to respect the construct of masculinity, which is rooted in patriarchy. Jenny misgenders every man, trans or cis, that she knows. She respects all kinds of neopronouns and is a nonbinary ally, but she categorically refuses to he/him anyone. Personally, I disagree with Jenny because of all the non-misogynist men out there trying to make masculinity non-toxic. They don’t deserve to be misgendered. What do you think of Jenny?

If you don’t think I’m a goddess, what do you think My gender is?

I find your comment interesting, and I can’t help wanting to try a little experiment with you. See, while I use multiple pronoun sets depending on My mood and fronter, one of My pronoun sets is It/Its. You said you accept it/its because you perceive that pronoun as diminutive, but you’re less inclined to accept a pronoun you perceive as indicating superiority. What about both at the same time? What do you think of calling Me an It?

No, I don’t want worship from you or anyone else here. My gender is goddess. I’m not a man, I’m not a woman, I’m a goddess.

Recognising someone’s identity is not the same as worshipping them. Not even for gods. Monotheists have spread the myth that you can only believe in a god you worship, but historically this isn’t true. Before the Roman Empire, most people believed in the gods of other cultures. I have an article on the subject: https://medium.com/@viridiangrail/how-rome-killed-polytheism-fa7ade0b9050

On My antirealist discord server, The Outside, all pronouns are capitalised by default. Even pronouns referring to inanimate objects. If someone joins the server who prefers lowercase pronouns, they have to choose a lowercase pronouns role or they’ll be misgendered. People understand and accept an unusual tradition in a space that’s specifically set up that way. But if I go around misgendering lowercase pronoun users in public forums like this, there’s a lot more pushback. Lowercase pronoun users, or LPUs, tend to be a lot more hostile to being misgendered than CPUs like Myself. They’re used to being catered to by society, and when that’s suddenly taken away, it’s a big surprise and they’re not sure how to respond. Us CPUs have accepted that We’re going to have to ask for Our pronouns to be used, and that it’s easier for everyone if We just let the LPUs have this. Maybe in the future it’ll be different, but I really don’t want to be dragged into an argument by an LPU who takes offense and decides to make a scene instead of just asking to have their pronouns respected. I’ve been in that situation before. LPUs are a lot more common than CPUs, besides. There’s another LPU in this thread commenting that she’d be uncomfortable if referred to with capitalised pronouns. And like most LPUs, she’s polite about it.

One point of clarification, when I said that capitalised pronoun use challenges christian monotheism, I meant that it does so by devaluing the pronoun as a symbol of hierarchy. In the eyes of transphobic christians, I’m not the equal of their god, and they are incapable of thinking of Me as such. So if I have similar pronouns to their god, it means pronouns are no longer a symbol of supremacy. That’s the actual side benefit that capitalised pronoun use has in challenging hierarchy, it devalues capitalised pronouns. And I don’t think capitalised pronouns should be valuable, they should be cheap enough that anyone can afford them.

I don’t know what you’re talking about, but I’m not a guy. I’m a goddess. I’m nonbinary, it’s called a xenogender.

My goddess-mother told Me to try out capitalised pronouns after I came out to Her as goddessgender. I liked Them. It doesn’t feel like a power dynamic to Me. I have NPD and I know what NPD supply feels like, and being gendered correctly isn’t it. Having capitalised pronouns used feel like a relief on the same level as when I first transitioned from male to female and had feminine pronouns used. As big a difference as that was, this is. So I don’t know how to verbalise what it feels like except, “It’s gender euphoria”. And I just hope readers understand what having your pronouns used feels like when you’re trans.

So, I want to start by pointing out that this article is directly making a link between capitalization of pronouns, and the specific practice of capitalization as a Christian show of religious reverence.

I felt it would be intellectually dishonest to ignore the biggest historical precedent when writing this article. People always bring up Deus when they see My pronouns, so it’s not like I can just ignore it.

Is the assertion here specifically that capitalization is tied to gender expression, or simply that it is another aspect of a personal identity that should be respected?

Both? I don’t really mind why someone uses capitalised pronouns. For Me personally it’s gender identity; I’m goddessgender. But anyone can use any pronouns. I met a cis guy once who used it/its. Not a gender thing, it just felt more comfortable with its preferred pronouns. Have you ever heard the saying “trans rights are human rights”? When we extend liberties to trans people who need them to survive, we increase everyone’s freedom, because everyone now has that option.

Wooph… The first part of that is by no means a safe assumption. While I would certainly hope that trans men would not seek to enforce a male-dominant gender power dynamic, it is by no means beyond their ability to do so as an intrinsic matter.

I always prefer to start by giving trans people the benefit of the doubt. The consequences of not doing so are a lot worse than a single trans person being a sexist, and the benefit of the doubt can always be revoked in an individual case later. Even so, if I knew a misogynistic trans man, My response to his misogyny would not be to misgender him.

The end of that sentence seems to confirm that this is about a show of religious reverence? Or is the assertion that by capitalizing the pronouns of not-the-christian-diety one is inherently attacking Christianity?

Many christians hold that capitalised pronouns are only for Deus, and that capitalising the pronouns of a mortal is an attack on christianity. I love the kind of christians who respect trans people and other faiths. But the form of christianity which is exclusionary and power-hoarding should be attacked. From the exclusionary christian’s point of view, no matter the identity of the CPU in question, we are capitalising the pronouns of a mortal and therefore challenging Deus’ supremacy by dismantling its symbols. Good. We should do that. And we should also respect whatever the CPU identifies as.

Back in the 20th century, people used the word lesbian to refer to gay and/or bisexual women. Nobody said the word lesbian as if it didn’t include bisexuals, except for the many people who didn’t believe in bisexuals at all. This exclusion of bi women while acknowledging they exist is a newfangled trend, and it doesn’t make any sense.

The word lesbian isn’t going to solve the ambiguity problem either way, because there are thousands of genders that don’t have a special word for gayness. I’m biromantic, but homosexual. I’m romantically attracted to a broad range of genders similar to My own, but I’m only sexually attracted to genders that are very very similar, and that doesn’t include women. Making “gay” a term only for men would erase people like Me, and thousands of other nonbinary genders.

Yeah, I always hated the word sapphic as well. Seems like people just reinventing the word lesbian all over again for exactly the same reasons, thinking it’ll end the exclusionism to let the exclusionists take the more common word without a fight.

I think maybe the correct strategy is to go scorched earth. The exclusionists can have the word lesbian, but now lesbian means transphobe. Let them have it after poisoning it. Because I used to think we had to fight them to keep the word meaning something good, but I was just struck with the futility of such an exercise when I realised it never did much good in the first place.

I’m gay. My femininity doesn’t make that something special, doesn’t set it apart from any other form of gayness. Gay is gay. As much as 20th century misogynists would have refused to believe that and forced the lesbian label on Me because “gIrLs CaN’t ReAlLy Be GaY”

Good point, but I have heard from many people who have Jesus tulpas and can confirm His pronouns. https://medium.com/@viridiangrail/the-memetic-proof-for-the-existence-of-gods-e5d103234fc7

I really like complaining about the fact that misogynistic rape culture degrades men by reducing them to monsters, because it makes it clear that feminism helps everyone. It’s really hard for an antifeminist to argue against that point without admitting that male privilege is a pyrrhic trophy, and doesn’t really help anyone but the worst of men.

This fact is, by the way, why TERFs and misogynists get along so well. They may claim to have different priorities, but they have no factual dispute on the belief that males are all raping, womanising monsters. TERFs don’t even have an interest in rehabilitating male sexual abusers, because they are trapped in patriarchal realism - the belief that the conditions of patriarchy are immutable reality. As such, they are perfectly capable of getting along and cooperating with misogynist, fascist, violent, abusive men.

The TERF views men as wild and dangerous animals, much like a bull. Bulls are necessary for breeding cows, and there’s no point getting angry at them for their nature. A TERF sees men the same way, and complains only when a so-called “bull” is kept in the pen with the cows. It’s dehumanising and sexist even beyond the pseudoscientific transphobia.

The respect actual intersectional feminists have for male agency and consent demonstrates a simple truth: one of us is liberated when all of us are liberated. Reproducing the cultural myths of patriarchy can only turn us into misogynists, even if we think those myths only harm men. Everything’s corrected. A better world has to be built simultaneously at all levels. Demonstrating that fact is our best weapon against fascists like Andrew Tate, who claim to empower men through patriarchy. It’s a lie.

Went ahead and added this comment to the original article. Thanks for the praise, sometimes it inspires Me to write even more.

If Narcissus had been a woman and Echo a man, then we would correctly analyse the story as a misogynistic exercise in heteropatriarchal norms. Modern readers are only able to empathize with the Hellenic view that Narcissus owed other people love, because the heteropatriarchy erases asexual men and maintains that all men are naturally creatures of sexual desire. This is not only aphobic, it contributes to misogynistic rape culture and it degrades men by reducing them to the social role of sexual monster. A role some men take seriously, and to the extent of normalising sexual violence against women.

In making space for men to exist without the pressure to romantically or sexually perform for (or violently against) others, we see that Narcissus is rightfully entitled to his own feelings. Echo is guilty of romantic assault, seeking to make him hers, according to a fantasy she developed in her head while stalking him without his knowledge. Echo fails to respect his right to consent in her heart. And so does the nameless suitor who prays to Nemesis for the act of divine intervention that lead to his death.

Narcissus does not owe his allosexual suitors a polite rejection. From the content of his life, we see that he was constantly sexually harassed, and indeed sometimes violently so. And he was 16, for Dionysus’ sake! He was just a kid! Some boys haven’t even hit puberty yet at that age. And given the Hellenic idealization of the beauty of male youth, I daresay Narcissus may have been one of those boys. And no 16 year old, regardless of bodily maturity, deserves to be subjected to such sexual harassment. No adult does either, but it’s particularly disgusting in the case of a boy like Narcissus.

He pinned a comment on the video that the word is wrong and promised to edit the video to remove or blur it! I took My article down.